If you wanted to make any sort of informed observation then you would need to know the number of machines dispatched, when they were dispatched, what shipping methods were used, and which version of the boxes were used - at least. All of these will be correlated with the number and type of issues observed. There may also be other important variables.
We don’t have any of this information and as a result we cannot make an informed observation.
Self selected surveys are inherently biased and considered unscientific unless strong controls are in place. There are no controls in place here. The results simply aren’t robust.
Oh I don’t know. So far so good. They’ve predicted each announcement fairly accurately by at least a month. Perhaps not as early as you might know with the inside scoop, but not as late as the public announcement.
I suspect it will also fairly accurately predict when they’re close to completing emailing the fundraising campaign.
I’m still confused why people need the spreadsheet to be useless? Why? It may have big error bars on it, but it’s unlikely to be wholly useless after being so empirically useful for prediction several times already. Why is it threatening to people that Glowforge might be farther behind than they’re ready to go public with? I just can’t understand why that info is scary. It shouldn’t even be news by this point. Getting this project finished was bound to be harder than they thought.
And, by the way, I’m inclined to think that the data still supports the Glowforge as a worthwhile purchase even with some of the unfinished work. And when they send you your golden email, it’ll be open about what isn’t working yet so you can decide to wait or refund at that point.
It’s looking to me like the problems people are most likely to report on the forum are:
Shipping damage (Guessing, but I think not enough to worry you if you’re domestic)
Camera alignment
Poor error reporting for service down or connectivity issues
I don’t know about anybody else, but I’m not trying to claim the spreadsheet is useless. I’m just not comfortable with the frequency at which it’s cited as a reference. It’s nowhere near robust enough for that.
My personal feeling is that when it indicates a delay, there’s a good chance it’s correct. But it might not be, and due to the poor quality of the data we really have no way to know. If you want to use it as part of your personal compass, by all means do so. But people should stop advertising it all over the forum as if it’s a source of truth.
I don’t think there is anything significantly untrue about the spreadsheet. It has lots of people on the days when GF say they had lots of orders and when they take a long time to cover them and few on days where they move quickly. It has always been the most accurate information we have and when it contradicts Dan and the GF staff it has proved to be more truthful than them.
If they were truthful about how many they had shipped and how many orders were on each day there would be no need for it.
The original issue being discussed in this thread is the suggestion of another spreadsheet or other collation of issues reported with Glowforges. Issues, or lack there of with the order spreadsheet is a sidetrack.
My concern with the issues tracking is that it will be biased significantly and will often not have the resolution. And just as the order spreadsheet has been used as a bludgeon, I think an issue spreadsheet would be used thusly even more.
And I think its effect would be to tar and feather Glowforge and could cause problems for the longevity of the company. The forum threads about issues, both in and out of Problems and Support, have context. Someone trying to understand the company’s response to issues has plenty to read. Tracking in a spreadsheet only gives raw, biased, numbers—no context.
“My concern with the issues tracking is that it will be biased significantly and will often not have the resolution.”
That is why I would like Glow forge or @dan to create such a listing. Like a errata listing, like many other companies do in the industry.
All I want is to know what are the current issues and if I encounter a issue I would want to know if there is a purposed work around.
If you say search the forums I come across all this “emotion” / “cheer leader” crud that does not help to make a informed decision.
@Jules I strongly disagree with you. There is a “promise” of delivering a product with in a reasonable amount of time when a purchase is made. @dan saying “sorry” reinforces that the delivery is far beyond the reasonable expectation. Also complaining does send message to glowforge that there consumer base is fragile. I would also assume their investors monitor the forum feed. One voice can make a difference.
“This section of the forum is about creating helpful content both for posters AND for later readers who come to find a solution”.
Seems to me the problems and support thread would satisfy that has a comprehensive list of problems people have encountered with a solution if there is one.
Not really since a ton of those threads get thread-locked without explaining the resolution. It seems for a lot of them, the fix was handled via pm’s or emails and the thread dies without helping other readers. I have seen some recently that do go ahead and explain the fix, but certainly not all of them.
Support prioritizes e-mail contact over forum contact. So if you post here and send an e-mail they will close the forum post as a duplicate ticket. This is most likely because if they need personal information they’ll switch to e-mail anyway.
That may be, but the majority that I have seen are closed upon staff seeing it and staring an interaction. Usually ending it with notifying the op that they have reached out to them. That’s good for the op, provided a solution was reached, but not for the community. It also doesn’t help with the concern raised in this thread.
Double sided cutting, continuously variable focus, and DFX import. Dan has said they still intend to do the first two but he also said they would release open source firmware at launch time and we are about five months from on unless he has a different definition of “launch”.
Removed from the front page advertising. So people buying them now won’t expect to see double sided cutting unlike those of us who bought from the advert two years ago.
perfect example: @semhar closed another post regarding calibration. with the same instructions. I see this same error reported practically every week. would be nice to have a known issue list.
@semhar wrote
"Thanks for letting us know that happened. If it happens again, please:
Turn off your Glowforge (this is important to avoid damage to your unit)
Open the lid and, using both hands, gently move the laser arm to the center of the bed
Gently move the head under the lid camera
Turn your Glowforge back on
If your Glowforge has trouble calibrating again, please let us know. Thanks! "
